The folks at Dog Might sent us their newest wood thing to check out. The Component Collector is a set of eight wooden holders-of-things, each 3.25″ square, with magnets to arrange them on your game table. These are stored in a dice tray that’s about 4.5″ by 6.25″, secured with a strap. Ours was a Crimson-level backer pledge — yes, it’s on Kickstarter right now — with three Square token tiles, one Deck tile, one Double tile (for a few standing cards and two rounded wells for tokens or coins), a Quad tile (with four rounded wells for smaller tokens), a Bowl, and a Counter (with a dial numbered from 0-9).

As you may have guessed, these are for you to hold board game components in. For some games, these will hold everything — we tried this with our latest game of Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 and it worked pretty well (although we kept the disease cubes in petri dishes). For other games, you can use these to hold your player-specific bits. “Using this at a complex game like Scythe, you feel like you have your own little command center,” said Michael Konas, Dog Might co-founder.

For the project, you choose the eight tiles included in your product. In addition to variety of different-shaped wells for tokens, they also offer tiles with a first player marker that you can pass around to other players, an angled deck holder, and one that is designed to act as a coaster for a can or bottle at the game table. (Not that I suspect the type of person to buy a high-end game upgrade like this would chance having a drink that could spill on the same playing space as a board game.)

Most of the games I have that could use a product like The Component Collector really feature small plastic or wooden tokens. For my games, the curved bowl were easier to use than the square. We didn’t try this with a game that required a deck of cards for the Deck tile to really be useful — most games we have with cards actually have multiple decks of cards (and we only had the one Deck tile) or there were dedicated spaces on the game board for decks. I could see us using the Slots tile (with four slots for standing cards) or the Card tile (one slot, plus a large rounded well for tokens.

I really like the dice tray the tiles are contained in. It’s a small component that’s there to keep the tiles contained and works great as a dice tray. Plus, like the tiles, the tray has rare earth neodymium magnets on the short sides (the tiles have them on all four sides), allowing for them to connect up to the rest of your command center.

Based on all that, should you get a set? These are cool, but you’d have to really look over your game collection and decide which combination of tiles will suit your game play best. For my collection, that’s probably one Slots (four standing cards), one Card (one standing slot + large token well), one Dual (two coin-like holders), three or four Bowls (rounded, for tokens), and maybe two or one Squares (square, flattened token well). And while they’re cool…I’d really be happy if I had just one set for common components, like the research stations and disease cubes in Pandemic, or a selection of them in multiple colors (which Dog Might offers) so everyone at the table can have their own set. It’s a cool-looking add-on, that’s for certain.

Currently on Kickstarter (ending in 6 days!), a base Component Collector (in Whitewood with a standard set of tiles) is available at $44. Five dollars more gets you a set in Kentucky Coffetree wood with a choice of tiles. There’s a large selection of other woods in the $54 to $64, and even more at higher price points made from luxurious wood types. Combo packs, extra large Collectors (with 12 tiles and larger dice tray), and more are offered.